Into the Heart

When Kenneth Good began his work with the Yanomama Indians, he planned to stay with them in the jungle for 15 months. 12 years later he was still there. The tribe described as violent, bloody and persistently aggressive, delighting in murder, living on hallucinogenic drugs and drinking the ashes of their dead, showed compassion and camaraderie in their everyday lives. As Good integrated himself into the tribe and learnt their language, one of their own women, Yarima, began to respond to him, first as a child watching a stranger, then as a betrothed young girl, then as his wife. Good was caught up in a harrowing life-or-death struggle to keep her. This is the story of how they overcame opposition, difficulties and danger from those around them to enable their love to survive. This account highlights the contrast between the primitive culture of the Yanomama - who have no written language, no system of numbers and have not yet invented the wheel - and the modern world of planes, cars and electricity. It is a testimony to the human ability to adapt to and accept a way of life as strange as life in another galaxy.